Customizing Screen Appearance

Color Palettes and Color Flashing

You set your workspace colors through a color palette. The number of colors in the palette is determined by your display type and the Number of Colors selection.

Figure 7-3 Number of Colors Dialog Box

Running certain applications may result in a phenomenon know as color flashing or colormap flashing, where the application appears with incorrect colors while the rest of the desktop appears normal, and when given the focus it displays with correct colors but the rest of the desktop does not. Color flashing is typically found in either of the following
circumstances.

Your workstation does not use a 24 bit graphics card

You are running applications that are designed to use their own colormaps (thus placing a burden on the frame buffer)

This is due to fundamental limitations in XWindows when dealing with applications that do not use the default colormap. While you can't use more colors than your display allows, you can reduce the number of colors used by the desktop by choosing a lower-valued color usage in the Number of Colors
to Use dialog box, or by exiting other graphics-intensive applications.

For example, if you have a high-color display and have selected More Colors for Desktop but you want to run a color-rich application such as a computer-aided design (CAD) program, you should choose More Colors for Applications or Most Colors for Applications to decrease the number of colors that
the desktop uses. The remaining colors are available for the CAD program.

To Overcome Color Flashing

If you have closed all other graphics-intensive applications and your application is still experiencing color flashing, the following procedure may help eliminate the problem.

Login to CDE and re-open the application that previously experienced color flashing.

If the application no longer experiences color flashing, make a note of the current Style Manager settings; if it is still experiencing color flashing, the application has probably specified a list of colormaps to be installed, CDE is only installing the first colormap in this list, so you will
need to cycle through the colormaps as explained in the following steps.

Use the following special keyboard keys to cycle through the colormaps.

Control-L2 (or Control-Again)

Steps forward through the colormaps

Control-L4 (or Control-Undo)

Steps backward through the colormaps

Cycling through the colormaps may end up installing the correct colormap, and will not affect the other windows on the desktop in any way. If you continue to experience colormap flashing, have your system administrator seek further information on SunSolveSM.

Running OpenWindows Applications

During startup, dtsession will set *foreground, *background and other OpenWindows global color resources so that OpenWindows applications will be in the same color scheme as CDE applications. You can still control the appearance of their
applications by setting application-specific resources; alternatively,, change the palette in Style Manager and restart the OpenWindows application.

Color Buttons

Your display type and the Number of Colors selection determine the number of color buttons that make up a palette. You will have two, four, or eight color buttons in the Color dialog box. The different color buttons in the palette control the colors used for different areas of the screen.

If you have eight color buttons, they will be used as follows (buttons numbered from left to right, top to bottom):

Fonts

The font size and font group you select in Style Manager is used on titles, menu bars, window labels and text. The new font size and font group is used as applications are started. Existing windows will not reflect the change.

To Select a Font Size

Click the Style Manager Font control.

Select a font size under Size.

Click OK to enable newly started applications to use the selected typeface, or click Cancel to cancel the operation.

To Select a Font Group

Click the Style Manager Font control.

Select a font group under Font Group.

Look at the Preview window labels and text, which show the new font typeface.

Click OK to enable newly started applications to use the selected typeface, or click Cancel to cancel the operation.

To Add a Font Group

Click the Style Manager Font control.

Choose Add in the Font dialog box.

Choose a font group from the System scrolling list and a font group from the User scrolling list.

Click OK to open the Font Group Name dialog box.

Enter a name in the New Font Group Name field of the Font Group Name dialog box for the new font group.

You can enter any non-blank name that you want.

Click OK to add a font group to the Font dialog box scrolling list.

To Delete a Font Group

Click the Style Manager Font control.

Select a font group from the Font Group scrolling list on the Font dialog box.

Click the Delete button.

The Delete Font Group dialog box appears.

Click OK to delete the font group from the Font Group scrolling list.

To View Font Attributes

Click the Style Manager Font control.

Click the Attributes button.

The Font Attribute dialog box appears. It provides name and location information on the font size and font group you selected. This information varies according to the alias family (system, user, user bold) and character set you choose from the combo boxes at the top of the dialog box.

Click Close to dismiss the Font Attribute dialog box.

Backdrops

You can select a backdrop pattern to cover each of your workspaces (the screen area underneath your windows). A unique backdrop for each workspace adds variety and helps you to quickly identify the workspace
you are in.